Painting the Nursery - Part 2

Yesterday we left off where Tom had primed all the trim, then he was able to get a fresh coat of white paint on the trim to match the rest of the house (finally!).

I always love me some fresh white trim - don't you?

Here's a quick before and after of the closet trim:

After the trim had some time to dry, it was time to paint the ceiling and inside of the closet a fun light blue color...

On Labor Day (hah!), Tom's Mom also came over to help out with the painting party, and the final coat of light gray went up on the walls. Hallelujah!

And here's the room with all new fresh paint:

Looking pretty good, am I right? We're both absolutely loving the ceiling and the closet - those touches of blue really add a little whimsy and interest to the space. And of course we still have a few small things to do in here, like replacing outlets and covers, installing some new air vents, and scraping off the window paint using this method.

But really? We're totally digging the new room.

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Painting the Nursery - Part 1

Did you have a lovely Labor Day weekend? We did, although we really took the word "labor" to heart!

In case you haven't already guessed, the big project of the weekend was painting the nursery! And incredibly enough, it actually took us (or rather Tom and his awesome Mom) all three days to paint the room! Yep, we sure had a Labor-ful weekend, that's for sure.

On Saturday we spent a good chunk of time just prepping the room - which always, no matter how hard I try, takes much longer than I originally thought. But then again, that same rule applies to just about every single home improvement project we tackle, so in retrospect I guess I should just mentally double the time I plan for prepping to make the plan more "realistic".

To prep, Tom took off all the plate covers, the air vent covers, the closet doors, the bedroom door (which needs a little fixin'), and the window hardware. Meanwhile, I went around the room and spackled over all sorts of holes and filled a ton of gaps around the window with caulk. Cuz, you know, big gaps around window = cold drafts in the wintertime, and we aren't real keen on letting little Baby M turn into a little icicle when the wind blows just right.

So, with all that done, Tom went around the room and wiped everything down really well with a TSP alternate solution, which cleans off the wall surface (you'd be amazed at how much grime we got off!) and helps the new paint stick.

Then it was time to spread out the tarps to protect the carpet and tape off the quarter round and baseboards, since those would be getting a fresh coat of paint, too.

Finally, bright and early on Sunday morning, Tom got around to painting priming...

And I'll leave the rest for tomorrow, so stay tuned!

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Bathroom Redo: Part 5 - Paint and Beadboard

Once the walls were spackled to our satisfaction to help even things out a bit (and we had eliminated the giant hole in the wall where the medicine cabinet used to be), it was time to really make things pretty with some paint!

When we're painting over particularly glossy surfaces or if it's a room we haven't painted yet ourselves, we like to start out with a nice coat of primer juuuusssst incase.

Then it was time to splash some color up on the walls!

When we were shopping for supplies I decided on a nice green/blue/turqoise/aqua color for the bathroom (using this method), and we love it! It's fresh and clean and really brightens up the room. The color itself reminds me of a pool or some of that cool sea glass that you can find along the beach. In a nutshell: nice and refreshing, especially with the big dose of white it's gonna get! The actual paint color is Frosty Grass by Valspar.

After the paint was on, we could proceed to covering up that ugly nastiness on the bottom half of the walls with some beautiful new beadboard, topped off with some new trim to finish things off. What a difference!

To get the beadboard up, it involved lots of measuring, cutting, and then some finishing nails and liquid nails for good measure and to ensure a secure and even bond with the wall (we didn't want any moisture getting caught back there!).

Kudos to Tom for making all the cuts so perfect! I tell ya, it was a bit of a process figuring out how to cut the beadboard out for the plumbing (previously there used to be a giant hole in the tiled wall for the sink plumbing). In the end he cut out a couple small squares that weren't part of the rest of the big piece of beadboard, thinking that in the future if we (or a later homeowner) needed access to the plumbing pipes behind the wall, all we'd have to do is rip out the small square areas around the pipes, keeping the rest of the beadboard intact (and we only used finishing nails for the small square section, so we could rip it out and reattach it without too much difficulty).

I gotta hand it to us, sometimes we really think ahead (and sometimes not-so-much).



Some caulk and a quick coat of white paint later (much thanks to Tom's Mom who came over and helped out with finishing the painting!)...

And the walls were about done!

It's really starting to look like an actual nice bathroom in here! Paint never ceases to amaze us with how quickly and easily it can transform an entire room, and the beadboard really makes everything look nice and airy and crisp while doing double-duty to conceal the nastiness leftover from the tiles along with adding tons of charm and character to the tiny bathroom. And the fact that the beadboard also very closely matches the white wainscotting in our basement and helps tie everything together for a more cohesive look and feel throughout our house just makes it that much sweeter!

Here's a quick shot of our basement wainscotting:

See? Pretty close match, huh?

Now it's time to tackle that floor...

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Bathroom Redo: Part 4 - Spackle is my BFF

So far we've installed a fan vent, planned the remodel, and did some demo. That left us with a nice blank slate to start off with.

Well, it was actually more of a uneven and chipped slate. Check out this closeup of the walls:

There were pits and uneven spots everywhere! We could have replaced all the drywall with new, but we've done that before and we'll be the first to admit that our mudding skills are sorely lacking.

So I broke out the spackle jar and got my spacklin' on.

Call me crazy, but it was sort of therapeutic filling all those cracks and gaps. And when I was done, all it needed was a light sanding and we were in business. Of course it still won't be as nice and even as brand new drywall would be, but it worked pretty well for us.

Next we had to figure out the medicine cabinet dilemma. We already had a mirror that we wanted to use from Tom's Mom (thanks!), and it would work perfectly.

The only problem?

It was a regular mirror, and we had a medicine cabinet already installed in the bathroom. Once we took the medicine cabinet out, there was a huge hole in the wall.

So we put in some drywall and added a bit more spackle, and it looks pretty decent.

It's not perfect but it's going to be mostly covered by the new mirror (and any future mirrors), anyway. The goal was to get rid of a giant hole in the wall, not make it perfect.

That done, we could move onto more exciting things - like primer and paint! Woohoo!

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Bathroom Redo - Part 3: Demo

Ahh, demo is always the funnest part of any home remodel, am I right?

After installing a fan vent, shopping for supplies and planning our attack on the bathroom, it was time to break out the big guns.

Oh yeah.

Tom spent one lovely afternoon ripping out the old and cracking linoleum, along with the thick piece of plywood underneath, to reveal our wood subfloor.

Well... after we cleared out the huge mess, that is!

Then we realized that the wall tiles needed to go as well...

And this is what we were left with.

We noticed that there was a small area of the wooden subflooring that was beginning to rot next to the tub. After talking to some pros, we were left with two choices on how to handle it: 1) rip it out and replace it, or 2) fix it. We chose the fix-it method. First Tom gouged out all the wood that had rotted to reveal the intact wood underneath, and then he applied a wood solution that halts rot in it's tracks while reinforcing the remaining wood. Score. To make the area level with the rest of the subflooring (since it was gouged to get rid of the rotten layer), Tom then applied half a tub of wood putty.


While not the prettiest, the important thing is that we prevented the subflooring  from continuing to rot away unknown underneath the flooring, and further reinforced it.

We also noticed that the bottom part of the drywall was a bit, um, crumbly. Not good right? Tom replaced the bad drywall with some nice sturdy plywood (more on why we went with plywood over drywall later).

And? We were left with a blank slate to work from. Finally.

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Bathroom Redo: Part 2 - Shopping and Planning

Before we even began our much-awaited and anticipated bathroom remodel project, we took an extensive shopping excursion to our favorite place - Lowe's.

The Dr. told me to take it easy on the shopping, and I took his advice to heart!

Yep, I totally had a blast on that thing. We were laughing the entire time, and Tom got a kick out of making me backup just to hear that annoying little beeping noise.

Anyways, about 3 hours later we had just about everything we'd need for the entire bathroom remodel. Why make it all in one trip? We had a coupon for 10% off our entire purchase, and we wanted to make the most of our savings. Score.

Planning and gathering all the supplies we would need really cut down on the number of trips we've taken to the store in the middle of a project, and has been essential in our space-planning.

We found that the only vanity we liked (and could afford), was about 3" wider than our existing vanity, requiring that it be shifted to the left so it will be slightly closer to the toilet. This posed a problem with the mirror medicine cabinet, of course, and to be center over the new vanity our new mirror would need to shift slightly left, and the new light would need to be moved higher to accomodate our new taller mirror. These were all things we couldn't have anticipated beforehand if we had not had all our supplies on-hand and known their dimensions and size.

Plus? It's also nice to get a feel for how the room would look when we're done. And just because I can't resist, here's the vanity we chose:

{via}

Another thing we had to decide on?

The wall tiles.

Here's the deal on those: they were okay, added lots of character and were really nice...

At one point in time.

See, the tiles hadn't been properly cared for or maintained for years. Combine that with the fact that the bathroom never had a fan vent (until we installed one, that is!) and had streams of water dripping down the walls (and therefore tiles) every time someone showered, and you can imagine what the grout looked like when we inherited the bathroom. First I intended to save the tiles by simply recoloring the grout, but the grout was also missing or cracked in places, and I knew that to revive and keep the tiles it would be a hassle. Chipping out the old grout and re-grouting it all when I wasn't even in love with the existing tile just didn't make much sense to me.

So it was decided that the wall tiles had to go.

What else was going?

The floor. Goodbye nasty, dirty, ugly, cracked and peeling linoleum. We won't miss you!

In the end we decided that most things would be getting replaced or would be getting a face lift with some paint. The only things we won't be touching at all is the ceiling and the tub and shower surround.

(you can see the shower tiles and window pretty well in this old photo)

Thankfully, we love the shower! The surround has the square version of our white ceramic subway tiles that we used to DIY our kitchen backsplash, and the shower tiles had nice white grout, too. They're not the trendy subway tile shape, but hey - they're nice, white, square, and in good condition, and we want to do this bath on a budget - so they work for us!


And what made us even more excited? That we would be able to shower throughout our bathroom remodel! Yep, that's right, there will be no showering outdoors for this couple, thankyouverymuch! What can I say - the thought of crawly bugs and mosquitoes feasting on me while showering outdoors in plain view of the neighbors was just not appealing to this pregnant gal.

Oh, and the last thing that's staying (at least for now), is the window in the shower. Yes, it's weird. We know. Oddly enough, it's seems to be pretty common in older homes around here - the duplex we rented before we bought this Fossil had a window in the shower exactly like this. Strange, huh? Anyways, we have future plans to fix this little indiscretion - but for now it's staying. We'll have enough on our plate with the rest of the remodel as it is!

Once we had our plan of action we got to work with some always-fun-and-exciting demo - stay tuned!

So what about you? Are you tackling or planning any sort of major remodel right now? Do you like to gather all your supplies at once or buy-as-you-go? And honestly: would YOU save the tile?

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Bathroom Redo - Part 1: We Gotta Vent

Last week I spilled the beans about how we're tackling the bathroom first instead of the nursery (although it's really killing me not to get started in there yet! I blame the hormones.)

The first part of our bathroom remodel actually didn't involve demo - surprising, huh?

Instead it involved installing a fan vent.

While not the most exciting remodeling update, fan vents serve a great function by venting out the steam from a shower so it goes outside and doesn't stick around your bathroom. They're pretty standard in homes nowadays, but oftentimes older homes will be lacking in the vent department.

Why are they so important? Here's what would happen everyday when it was shower-time: Steam would rise from the shower, causing it to get really hot and sticky in the bathroom. Condensation would form on the walls, the sink, heck - even inside the medicine cabinet. Said steam/condensation would then hit a point and start streaking/dripping down the walls, causing mildew buildup everywhere in our bathroom and actually causing things like the door handle and glass shelf supports to rust (admittedly, we do take hot showers, but this even happened in the winter time when we only have a 15-minute window of hot water to work with and the starting temperature in the bathroom was pretty chilly. Honestly, I think it's the combo of not having anywhere to vent and having such a small bathroom space).

Lovely, right?

So in order to protect and preserve all our efforts of the future bath remodel, we knew we needed to install this not-so-exciting-but-totally-functional-and-worthwhile vent in there.

While I was busy at work, Tom got right to it.

First he examined the light switch. And immediately hit his first obstacle (figures, right?).

The electrical system for the light switch was a nightmare. What the heck is going on with these wires?!...

Fast forward 3 hours later, and he finally got it figured out. Don't ask me how - I've no idea how he did that. I must say I'm totally impressed, though. You go, Tom.

He installed a new light switch and ran new wires up the wall and into the attic, which required that he completely empty out our office closet nook, since that's where our attic access is. Fun, right?

Then it was time for fan installation!

Bathroom fan vents are usually installed in about the middle of the space and not directly over the shower for safety reasons. So Tom took apart our towel rack and marked where he wanted the fan vent... with the towel rack rod. Nice, honey. (it's a good thing I'm still on the fence about keeping that particular towel rack!)

It was a special way of marking it, but I can't argue with the logic - once he was knee-deep in insulation up in the attic, he said it was super-easy to see that rod sticking out of the sea of newspaper-like insulation. Then it was an easy task of cutting out the drywall to fit the new vent, creating a cardboard "barrier" to keep the insulation away from the vent, and installing it (sorry, no photos of that part - it was too hot and cramped up there for him to lug up the camera!).

Then comes the fun part (because we hadn't had enough fun yet, apparently!). It's strongly recommended to vent bathroom fans to the outside, since venting straight into your attic can cause all sorts of problem, thanks to the steam buildup that would be accumulating up there.

There are several different ways to vent a fan: through the roof, through the side of the house, or through the roof's soffit.

Since we didn't want to touch the roof (roof leaks scare us!), and venting through the wall seemed impossible (how would we do that?!), we opted for the soffit vent.

So Tom ran some duct tubes from the vent over to the roof soffit area, and marked the spot. We went outside and he used a variety of tools to cut into the soffit. We followed the directions on the soffit venting-thing and traced an outline of the circle onto the soffit, which Tom then cut out. After taping and screwing in the duct tube to the soffit vent, it was a simple matter of caulking and screwing in the vent.

And we were done! Hallelujah.

Check out these beautiful before and after photos of our bathroom ceiling...

I know this post makes it sound decently easy, but in reality it took alot of work to get that simple, innocent little fan vent up in our bathroom. Of course anyone can do it, but it took us amateurs (although mostly Tom) a good 8 hours or so once it was all said and done.

But the good news? It was alot of work, but it was totally worth it. We noticed an immediate difference the next time we showered with how much moisture was in the room and was accumulating on the walls, which was fantastic! It means a cleaner bathroom and much less damage to everything in it, which is a priority since we'll be totally redoing the space (and why spend valuable time and money redoing something if it can't stay nice, anyways?).

And even more good news? In our area a bathroom fan vent installation runs about $450. Guess how much we spent total? $100 on supplies. We saved $350 by doing it ourselves.

Gotta love DIY.

What about you? Have you ever installed a bathroom fan vent? Have you ever dealt with an older bathroom that didn't have one? Anyone else know what I mean with the "dripping wet walls"?

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